David Bowie releases new single, 'The Stars (Are Out Tonight)'

David Bowie released a new single, "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)," accompanied by a video costarring Tilda Swinton.

David Bowie released a new single, "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)," accompanied by a video costarring Tilda Swinton.

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Mikael Wood

As more-or-less promised, David Bowie released a new single early Tuesday, the second sampling from his upcoming album, "The Next Day," which Columbia Records is to issue in the United States on March 12.

"The Stars (Are Out Tonight)" follows last month's "Where Are We Now?," but unlike the earlier tune -- a lush ballad in which Bowie seemed to reminisce about his late-1970s days in Berlin -- "The Stars" rides a fuzzy, uptempo guitar-band groove a la "Suffragette City" or "The Jean Genie." It lends credence to producer Tony Visconti's claim that "The Next Day" is "quite a rock album," as he recently told the BBC.

In addition to the single, Bowie unveiled a music video for "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)," a moody piece directed by Floria Sigismondi in which Bowie and Tilda Swinton play a middle-aged couple whose quiet life is unsettled when a pair of sex-obsessed pop stars move in next door. (Anyone wondering whether Swinton knows how much she looks like Bowie can now rest assured that she does.)

"They burn you with their radiant smiles / Trap you with their beautiful eyes," Bowie sings, perhaps in reference to himself. "They're broke and shamed or drunk or scared / But I hope they live forever."

We can't show you the clip here (thanks to a few brief flashes of nudity), but it's available to watch at YouTube, where it had already racked up nearly 130,000 views by late Tuesday morning.